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Lasting Impacts of Slavery on Modern America

If I could only choose one lesson to teach someone about American history, it would be about slavery and the lasting impacts on Americans today.  Although there are many great things about America, our history and legacy has been built on the backs of slave labor. Slaves were treated as property and less than human.  It shocked me when I first found out about slavery in elementary school.  I was horrified!  How can one person think to own another? And the treatment of slaves was usually horrible.  Families were broken apart through sale of children or other loved ones.  Slaves were beat and whipped, sometimes worse.  Female slaves were often taken advantage of sexually by masters. Since slavery in America was predominately based on skin color, American culture was and is more slanted towards racism against African Americans.  This was to keep the slaves held to lower standards and later to rationalize mistreatment or unequal treatment of African Americans.  Many whites still feel that they are inherently smarter or better than blacks and unnecessarily fear African Americans.  This is multigenerational conditioning from parent to child to think that skin color affects a person's character that started with slavery in this country.  No one is born with racist views or any preconceived notions.  I believe the violence against African Americans by police stems directly from the years of conditioning of society to not trust or automatically fear African Americans.  What really brings home the racist views in the United States today is the current election of Donald Trump.  He is a man who was known to discriminate against African Americans in the real estate market, as well as known to propagate other racist and sexist comments and actions.  Yet, so many people across the United States voted for him.  Now, there were many more issues than this to this election, and I wouldn't say that everyone who voted for Trump is a racist.  But since the election, the racists have come out of the woodworks and now feel that they can be out in the open with their own racist views.

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